Browse Items (57 total)

Agnes Jensen Mangerich and twelve other US Army nurses were supposed to transport wounded soldiers away from the front lines in Bari, Italy, on November 8, 1943. However, en route to their destination, their planes were crashed in a Nazi-occupied…

For awhile, if women wanted to serve as nurses in the military during World War II, they had to be between around 18 and 40 years old, and could not be married or have young children. Due to demand for nurses later on in the war, these rules were…

In the top photograph, US Army Nurse Dorothy Tonjes Managan poses for her picture in uniform. Managan, born in Flushing, New York in 1923, and graduated from high school in 1941. Managan chose to attend a three year nursing program at the Medical…

This is a page from the October 1943 issue of an Army Quartermaster Catalog, representing different types of uniforms available for nurses. One common material here is wool, which would be absolutely miserable in warm climates like Africa and islands…

American nurses had to be ready to treat wounded soldiers in any conditions, including the cramped, constantly moving, dangerous location of an evacuating aircraft. Just as Lt. Katye Swope is doing in the photo taken in July of 1943, other flight…

This image shows Army Nurse Corps recruits at Fort Lewis, WA, being trained in a way that many people do not realize nurses had to be trained. They are learning to use gas masks, just like soldiers and other military personnel planning to be near the…

This image depicts another type of medical equipment used during the war, the iron lung. A type of ventilator that has since (thankfully) been replaced by the modern respirator machines we see in hospitals today, this device helped patients who were…

These images show the bombing and enemy shelling of the 95th Evacuation Hospital in Anzio, Italy, on February 7, 1944. One is of the damage done to the hospital by the bomb, which killed 28 people, including 22 hospital staff. The colorful image is…

These large and small packets of sulfa drugs, specifically crystalline sulfanilamide, were meant to be applied directly to open wounds. Individual soldiers had the small packets issued to them in their first aid kits, and were trained in how to use…

Many people are unaware of the daily activities of World War II army nurses. The women pictured here, training in Australia before being sent to work in the Pacific, are participating in an early morning workout to stretch and exercise their muscles.…